1. One of the chief moments of prayer which the Holy Father desired for the
Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 is the liturgical chant of the Akathistos Hymn in
the Byzantine Rite on the evening of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
In this way, with the approach of Christmas, the holy Mother of God will be
honoured in the words of an outstanding text of the Eastern tradition.

2. The Celebrants. His Holiness Pope John Paul II will preside at the
celebration in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, together with
representatives of various Byzantine Catholic Churches. On other occasions, the
Holy Father has either expressed a desire for the Akathistos Hymn to be chanted
or has presided at the chant himself: in 1981, to commemorate the anniversaries
of the First Council of Constantinople (381) and the Council of Ephesus (431);
and during the Marian Year 1987-1988, as a means of highlighting the Solemnity
of the Annunciation on 25 March.
In order to give expression to the principal languages of the Churches of the
Byzantine tradition, the Akathistos Hymn will be sung in Greek, Old Slavonic,
Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian and Arabic.

3. The ritual. The approaching feast of Christmas is the heartof what the Great
Jubilee commemorates. The Jubilee commemoration of the Birth of Jesus Christ
confers special significance on this celebration of the Akathistos Hymn. Indeed,
'the joy of the Jubilee would not be complete if our gaze did not turn to her
who in full obedience to the Father gave birth to the Son of God in the flesh
for our sake. For Mary 'the time to give birth' came to pass in Bethlehem (Lk
2:6), and filled with the Spirit she brought forth the first 'born of the new
creation' (John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium, 14). The Akathistos
Hymn is the ideal patristic and liturgical text for celebrating the Mother of
God in the mystery of Christ and the Church as Christmas approaches.
The season of Advent now being celebrated by the Latin Rite and some of the
Oriental Rites makes even more appropriate this manner of celebrating 8
December. This is the day when Christians of the West commemorate the Solemnity
of the Immaculate Conception as the great moment of preparation for the
Saviour's coming, and Christians of the East celebrate the Vespers of Saint
Anne's Conception, which they regard as the last in a series of purifying gifts
of grace marking humanity's journey from Adam to Christ: after Christ, Mary is
the most exalted fruit of divine grace and human supplication. For this reason,
some of the texts used in the celebration refer to Joachim and Anne, Mary's
righteous parents, to whom it was granted to receive from God the Virgin Mother
according to the promise, and to return her to God as an offering in the nameof
all.
This celebration of the Akathistos Hymn also suggests and confirms the
ecumenical character of the Jubilee, which the Holy Father is keen to promote:
"Such a wealth of praise, built up by the different forms of the Church's
great tradition, could help us to hasten the day when the Church can begin once
more to breathe fully with her 'two lungs', the East and the West" (John
Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 34).

4. The celebration. In the Byzantine liturgy from which it is taken, the
Akathistos was originally celebrated on the fifth Saturday of Lent, which was
therefore called "Saturday of the Akathistos": and this not only
because of its proximity to the feast of the Annunciation, in which a passage
from the Akathistos still appears, but also because this Hymn, a matchless gem
of Marian theology and spirituality, links the mystery of Christmas to the
mystery of Easter, the birth of the Word made flesh to the Passover of his Death
and Resurrection and our rebirth through the sacraments of regeneration, the
motherhood of Mary at Bethlehem to her maternal presence at the baptismal font.
Today's celebration underlines the fundamental character of the Hymn: its
articulation of the entire Christmas cycle, which makes it 'a far' reaching
remembrance of the divine motherhood, virginal and salvific, of the one whose 'spotless
virginity gave the Saviour to the world' ' (Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, 5).

The celebration comprises many elements. All are centred on the Akathistos Hymn
itself, set in a broader context of prayer which, as in other Byzantine
celebrations, includes litanies, the Trisagion, the Our Father, troparia, psalms
and psalmodic verses.

A place of honour is given to the 'poetical canon' of Joseph the Hymnodist (
886), composed precisely for the celebration of the Akathistos, as a framework
to give it greater lustre. Like most poetic canons, it consists of nine odes
inspired by the nine biblical canticles from the Byzantine Morning Office (the
second ode is omitted, being reserved to penitential seasons). The canon of
Joseph is inspired by the themes of the Akathistos, but re-reads them in a
different devotional setting, more laudatory and symbolic in temper.

5. The Akathistos Hymn. It is fitting to give a fuller introduction to the Hymn
itself, for it is the heart of the celebration and as it were a declaration of
the Marian doctrine and piety of the Churches of the Byzantine Rite. Besides
celebrating it on the fifth Saturday of Lent and singing a section of it on the
four preceding Saturdays, monks, priests and faithful recite the Hymn on many
other occasions, even every day, because they have an instinctive sense of its
beauty and depth of meaning. Almost all Byzantine monasteries and churches
contain painted scenes from the Akathistos on the walls oftheir sacred
buildings, on vestments, on liturgical furnishings, or surrounding the most
celebrated icons.

Name. Akathistos is the title by which this fifth century Byzantine Hymn is
universally known. It was and still is the model for the composition of many
other hymns and litanies, both ancient and more recent. Akathistos is not the
original title, but a rubric:'a-kathistos' in Greek means 'not-seated', because
the Church stipulates that it be sung or recited 'standing', as when the Gospel
is read, as a sign of reverence for the Mother of God.

Structure. The metric and syllabic structure of the Akathistos is inspired by
the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in Chapter 21 of the Book of
Revelation, from which it draws images and numbers: it sings of Mary in her
identification with the Church, the 'Bride' with no earthly spouse, the Virgin
Bride of the Lamb, in all her splendour and perfection.

The Hymn comprises 24 stanzas (in Greek oikoi), which is the number of letters
in the Greek alphabet, and the whole is structured according to the alphabet,
each stanza beginning with the succeeding letter. But it was skilfully planned
in two distinct parts, on the two closely related and superimposed planes of
history and faith, and according to the two interwoven and complementary
perspectives of Christology and ecclesiology, which envelop and illumine the
mystery of the Mother of God. Each of the Hymn's two parts is in turn very
subtly subdivided into two sections of 6 stanzas: this subdivision is clearly
presented in today's liturgical celebration. Yet the Hymn unfolds in a binary
mode, in such a way that each odd-numbered stanza finds its metrical and
conceptual equivalent in the even stanza which follows. The odd stanzas are
amplified by 12 Marian salutations, gathered around their narrative or dogmatic
centre, and they finish with the ephymnion or closing refrain: 'Hail, Bride
unwedded!' By contrast, the even stanzas, after announcing the theme, which is
almost always Christological in background, ends with the acclamation to Christ:
'Alleluia!' Thus the Hymn is both Christological and Marian, with the Mother
subordinate to the Son and the maternal mission of Mary subordinate to the
universal saving work of the one Saviour.
The first part of the Akathistos (stanzas 1-12) follows the cycle of Christmas,
drawing its inspiration from the Infancy Narratives of the Gospels (Lk 1-2;
Mt 1-2).

It sets forth in song the mystery of the Incarnation (stanzas 1-4), the
outpouring of grace upon Elizabeth and John (stanza 5), the revelation to Joseph
(stanza 6), the adoration of the shepherds (stanza 7), the arrival and adoration
of the Magi (stanzas 8-10), the flight into Egypt (stanza 11), the meeting with
Simeon (stanza 12). These are events which transcend the historical facts and
become a symbolic reading of grace poured out, of the creature receiving grace,
of the shepherds proclaiming the Gospel, of those from distant lands who come to
faith, of the People of God which, rising from the baptismal font, goes forth on
its light-filled way towards the Promised Land and comes to a profound knowledge
of Christ.

The second part (stanzas 13-24) sets forth and sings of what the Church at the
time of Ephesus and Chalcedon professed concerning Mary, within the context of
the mystery of her Son the Saviour and of the Church which gathers all who are
saved.

Mary is the new Eve, a virgin in both body and soul, who by the fruit of her
womb leads mortals back to Paradise lost (stanza 13); she is the Mother of God
who, in becoming the seat and throne of the Infinite One, opens the gate of
heaven and leads us humans through (stanza 15); she is the Virgin who gives
birth and reminds us to bow down before the mystery of the divine birth and to
draw light from faith (stanza 17); she is the ever-Virgin, the dawn of the
virginity of the Church consecrated to Christ, the Church's unfailing ward and
loving protector (stanza 19); she is the Mother of the Easter sacraments, which
purify and divinize us and feed us with heavenly food (stanza 21); she is the
Holy Ark and the living Temple of God, who goes before and watches over the
Church and the faithful on their pilgrim way towards the final Easter (stanza
23); she is the Advocate of mercy on the last day (stanza 24).

Theological value. The Akathistos is a truly inspired composition of immense
importance:

- because of its sense of salvation history, embracing the entire plan of God
for creation and for creatures, from the origins to the very end, towards the
fullness which will be theirs in Christ;

- because of its pure sources: the word of God in the Old and New Testaments,
always present either explicitly or implicitly; the doctrine defined by the
Councils of Nicaea (325), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), from which it draws
directly; the doctrinal treatises of the greatest of the Eastern Fathers of the
fourth and fifth centuries, from whom it takes concepts and lapidary
formulations;

- because of its knowing mystagogical approach, by means of which - adopting the
most eloquent imagery from creation and Scripture - it raises the mind step by
step and brings it to the threshold of the mystery contemplated and celebrated:
the mystery of the Incarnate Word and Saviour, the mystery which, as the Second
Vatican Council affirms, indicates in Mary the 'place' where the principal
elements of the faith converge and echo forth to the world (cf. Lumen Gentium,
65).

Author. Almost the entire manuscript tradition considers the Akathistos Hymn to
be the work of an anonymous author. The Latin translation edited by Bishop
Christopher of Venice, around the year 800, which had a great influence on the
piety of the mediaeval West, bears the name of Germanus of Constantinople (
733). Today however scholars tend to attribute its composition to one of the
Fathers of Chalcedon: as such, this venerable text would be the mature fruit of
the most ancient tradition of the undivided Church of the first centuries. In
this year of the Great Jubilee, therefore, it deserves to be taken up and sung
by every Church and Ecclesial Community.

The Hymn is anonymous: and rightly so, for thus
it belongs to everyone, because it belongs to the Church.